


Out of Toull

by ethanauyoon



Series: Out of Toull [1]
Category: The Dark Tower (2017)
Genre: Character Study, Fantasy, Gen, Good Writing, Horror, Monster Hunters, Monsters, Original Fiction, Page-turner, Science Fiction, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Suspense, Sword and Shield, Swords & Sorcery, Thriller, Witchcraft, Witches, beasts - Freeform, crossbows, fantasy fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-02
Updated: 2018-03-05
Packaged: 2019-03-25 21:25:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13843344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ethanauyoon/pseuds/ethanauyoon
Summary: When a retired official with a past best hidden accepts a contract to deliver an unassuming young boy to Maqsoud, he discovers that no person and no thing is what it seems-- even himself.





	1. Chapter 1

The handler and the boy passed through the desert like a breeze through leaves of a dead palm tree. They trailed through towns and villages on horseback, leaving as quickly as they had arrived. On more than one occasion, just after supper, a confused inn hand or barkeep would come to collect their bowls, always thoroughly clean and wonder whom he'd served. Wonder if patrons sat there in the first place. Wonder if he had set two bowls out in a moment of mental vacuity.  
The handler did his best to travel discreetly. He adopted the drawl of the lands inhabitant, dropping his curt brisk manner of speaking for something languid. The handler didn't see his change in dialect like deception so much as like a seasonal change of clothes. He was in the land of Toull and he would speak like it. And on the rare occasions the boy spoke up, the handler demanded he do the same-- not that either often had a chance to speak. Toull was a barren, thankless land with few inhabitants and even fewer children. The ground was hard and cracked. When the handler passed by farms, he saw frail men with as much girth as the tools they used. They attacked the land petulantly. The handler watched them unearth dirt like stale rye which had been ground to a coarse powder.  
Toull was not the apotheosis of deserts, but rather a bumbling landscape with ochre fists of weeds. The place had some life to it yet. But a desert is a desert. Something about desert life stretched time into itself. Days deteriorated into something elastic. They expanded, bled into each other. The monotony of the desert was so powerful that it managed to cover any new or unusual events, and sometimes, people.  
The boy was such a person. Lanky with elbows that seemed to poke out of whatever he wore, jaundiced eyes and a mouth entirely unfamiliar with smiling. During the day, the desert was hot but he still wore long sleeve shirts with collars, partially to cover up his neck. He didn't speak much but when he did his voice was as firm as the man that traveled with him. Usually he nodded or shook his head to questions when they were asked of him. There was little need of this, townsfolk in the plains of Horith where they currently were, directed most questions towards the more conspicuous of the two.

Often overlooked but rarely dismissed, the handler was not, a person quickly dismissed. Overlooked, perhaps, but anyone who saw him, truly saw him, began asking questions. His clothes were well worn with the dust of his surroundings, but townsfolk who looked long enough noticed the designs under the dust. The paisley handkerchief. The handmade floral patterns in the shirt under a crocodile jacket. Which raised the question, where did he get a crocodile jacket from? That was if the townsfolk of the Plains of Horith had even seen crocodile skin. Most of them had assumed the handler's jacket was warped leather--extremely warped letter cured by some deft tanner able to make such handiwork.

Perhaps most conspicuous about the handler wasn't his clothes, or even the collapsible crossbow that stuck out awkwardly from the back of his pants but rather the box he carried. Harith townsfolk had simply never seen one. The only thing that shape that they had ever see were bricks and cake. Yet the size and weight of the box suggested it was neither. Slightly less strange was the leather cover draped over the box. It, was made out of a rough fabric that looked like an antique mirror-- if mirrors could be folded. The box's cover had a hole out of which the box's handle stuck, to be grabbed. For a region that hadn't seen miracle or magic, it was quite a wonder, and every now and again, a presumptuous clerk barkeep, or tavern drunk would hobble to their table, push past the boy, and ask,

"What's on the box, sully?"

The handler's response came without eye contact and usually through a mouthful of bread.

"Your eyes, you degenerate."

The handler gave this answer whether he thought the listener knew what a 'degenerate' was or not. Then he would look up at the person who asked and wait for them to understand that, regardless of what he carried, the situation had been dangerously misread, and that they were not to be trifled with. This usually worked: anyone who had seen the fabric and wondered what it covered had seen the bulge the crossbow left, too. When the attitude didn't work, there was always the crossbow, which of course, was not an ideal solution for any dispute. It might have been a Torquast collapsible crossbow, but the handler's bolts were nearly copper. Once, after an incident with a man trying to steal his horse, the handler had stumbled out of the inn half-dressed, lined up his shot, and released the bolt. The crossbow snapped and the bolt hit the thief in the back of the head. The eyes that saw his shot applauded it while the handler cursed. It took him a long while to retrieve the bolt out of the thief's head, a task made nearly impossible by the thief's thick skull. The boy slept that night but he didn't. They had passed through three other towns before the nightmare stopped.

He thought of this now, his boots up on the unoccupied chair at their table, as now as he played with a copper bolt, turning it between his thumb and forefinger. The lobby of the inn was mostly empty save a couple drunks, staring at no one in particular. The sun had just set, but the handler had a feeling the men would be there well into the early morning, mourning another year of inexplicable drought and livestock death.

"Do you think of Aristode?" the boy asked, bringing another spoonful of stew to his mouth.

The copper bolt stopped moving. The handler frowned at the boy. The boy was becoming increasingly aware of the handler's thoughts. He didn't like it.

"Finish your meal, Kerr," the handler chided and then, in a withdrawn tone, "yes, I was thinking of Aristode," he said.

"Could you have done anything else to stop the thief with our horse?" Kerr asked. "He was riding away by the time you had your pants on."

"My horse," the handler corrected. "And yes, I could have. I could have put a dagger in the man's hand when I saw him staring at it while we spoke to the innkeeper the morning before."

"You would have done that?" the boy said, lowered his spoon. "You're no common mercenary."

"And you're no soothsayer, so why don't we leave the reflection to me, hmm?" the handler said in a sweet pitch. "Finish your stew, boy. We've got a long night ahead of us."


	2. Chapter 2

The handler had never seen roach eggs before but he was sure he would find some if he stayed at that inn long enough. The room was quite possibly the most repulsive room he'd ever entered. He hadn't walked a foot past the threshold before he had stepped in something. What, he did not know, but it was black and gelatinous. It had been nearly invisible against the dirty wooden floorboards in the dimly lit hallway but he could see it clearly in the grooves of his boot's sole.   
The room itself had no candles, no oil lamps, no lighting to speak of. The innkeeper was renting oil lamps for a quarter piece, a travesty too grievous to be defined as "extortion". She claimed she'd already rented out all the smaller lamps and candles and had only the larger ones left. But the handler knew the true price of a lamp hire. He knew the price of everything. And while it sounded like a godsend to everyone, it grew to be a curse, a metric by which he discovered how greedy most people were.

He also read maps better than most merchants could count, an invaluable skill from his previous profession. However, all of his summoned skills could not help him with the map in his possession. He'd gotten the local map from a tanner but didn't recognize any of the landmarks or road. His goal was to get the boy to Maqsud, the Farlith haven on the edge of Toull. What the Farlith wanted with the boy he had no clue and didn't care. Completion of his escorting service meant the largest payout he had ever seen. Perhaps the largest amount of money he'd ever seen. He sighed. Things had gone well before they entered Toull. The boy even had his own horse, not two moons ago. But nothing good lasts for long. 

"Stay here and don't open the door for anyone," the handler commanded. "I'm going downstairs to speak with the innkeeper."

He stopped himself from saying more, and bitterly regretted the nonchalant way he'd spoken to the boy. A fine line had been drawn between the boy and the handler and he knew every casual interaction between them smeared it. Using his name, smeared it. The handler did not know what the Farlith wanted with the boy in Maqsud, but he suspected he didn't want to know. However, each time he said, "Kerr", the intimacy of using a person's name begged the question, "Why do the Farlith want him?" and "Who would promise an emperor's ransom for Kerr?" He shook the questions out of his head before there were answers.  
The boy nodded and the handler left, locking the door behind him.


	3. Chapter 3

The bar area had all but cleared out. Lamplight danced against the bar's greasy windows. The air reeked of decaying dreams and stale piss. Men stared into the depths of their mugs despondently. They reminded the handler of the oracles of ancient classical poetry the handler was forced to read at the academy all those years ago. Back when his hair had the shine of youth and his smile was contagious. Box in hand, the handler sauntered towards the bar counter. The crossbow in his back made it difficult to sit on the barstool, so he tucked it under the back of his shirt. It wouldn't be easy to draw, but at least he could enjoy a drink without possibly shooting himself in the back.

"What have you got?"

"House mead," the barkeep said. He was a pasty, muscular man with a beard that started at his top lip and ended somewhere beneath his shirt. The handler set the box down on the seat next to him. "It won't burn your throat, but it will keep you warm, stranger." Without smiling, he added the last word, "stranger", as a person nails a notice sign to a wooden post. The handler ordered the house mede and asked for the innkeeper.

"Haven't seen her all night. Check the front," the barkeep said, sliding a wooden cup towards the handler. The handler nodded at the advice.

As he drank, enjoying his time away from the boy's haunting stare, the floorboards creaked behind him. Hard soled boots against wood floorboards. He turned slightly, just enough to let the person behind him know he was aware of his presence. He had hoped that it was the innkeeper but knew better. Good luck was as much a stranger to the traveller as rain was to land he was currently in.

"What's in the box under that cover?" the voice said, the owner of it still just barely in the handler's view. It was raspy, as though its speaker spoke with a throat of scars. The accent, a rough tumble of vowels and cut words, was distinctly Lemilite.

"The arm of the last person who asked me that," the handler said, returning to his drink. That should have been the end of it but the voice continued. Whoever was speaking was carefully considering the box.

"Is that a handle sticking out? What do you reckon is in a box like that?"

The handler ignored him, until the Lemilite said, "I saw a man carrying something like that a couple weeks ago. Had a boy with him." He chuckled to himself. "The box weren't much to look at, but the man had on a jacket." The speaker paused for a moment. The handler thought he could hear a smirk. "I remember that jacket," the voice continued. "A man with a jacket like that stole my family's ranch. Came through, spouted some horseshiet about taxes and that was that. It was years ago, but I'll never forget it. Never forget the eyes on that bastard. They were soul-less eyes, you know." He chortled, as though something were funny. "I always thought, if I every caught up with the bastard, what's the harm in cutting someone like that? A man's got no soul, there's no harm in killing him, is there?"

The handler's heart was beating in his chest hard enough for barkeeper see, if he had been looking. But by that time the barkeep was at the other end of the counter, wiping the same part of the counter with his greasy rag. He thought to say something but figured his voice would only worsen the situation. He wasn't dead yet, and he was going to play things out. 

"That man claimed he was just doing his job," the Lemilite turned solemn. "Didn't make a life of wandering any easier, though. Ranch is gone, now. Has been for a spell, but my," he made a bit of a cooing sound. "That is a nice jacket. Where can I get a jacket like that?"

The easiest answer to the man's question was sitting on a barstool downing the last of his drink, and very not dead. After a deep breath the handler slid around and found himself face to face with an almost mirror image of himself. Same height and build, the man standing in front of him had his brown eyes. He was much paler, but well fed. His eyes were pink and he sneered, revealing two rows of teeth besotted by black rot. 

"This the part where you ask for my jacket?" the handler asked.

"Oh no," the Lemilite moaned, his eyes trying to bore a hole into the handler's. An arm was behind his back. "I do that, and you might actually give it to me. And I can't imagine anything worse than a solution as easy as that."

The handler didn't need to read minds to know that the hand behind the Lemilite's back was on the handle of some foul piece of work. A dagger laced with poison. A Toull bandit longblade. The handler had his own blades but had left most of them upstairs. There was the box, but by the time he threw the covers off it, and opened it, the Lemilite would have stabbed him twenty times by then. And his crossbow was inaccessibly tucked away. The handler swallowed. The Lemilite wanted blood and there was little the handler could do to avoid that. But, even though the odds weren't in his favor, the handler wasn't concerned about the Lemilite besting him. Partially because he suspected the Lemilite had been drinking since Kerr and him were eating dinner. But mainly because the handler's hands were far quicker than the average bar vagrant. 

The Lemelite's eyes flickered with intrigue but not at what the handler was prepared to do. Another voice, this one female but no softer than the Lemilite's, called out from behind the Lemilite. The couple patrons nursing their drinks had all stopped and were looking up now, staring at the Lemilite and the handler.

"That's enough Riyan," she said sternly. The handler risked a look to the side to see a stout woman behind Riyan brandishing a quick-lock crossbow. She grabbed the dagger the drunk had been holding behind his back, although not without a fight. "I don't know what your problem is this week," she said once she'd pried the blade from his hand. "But you won't be killing anyone else in my inn."

The man she called "Riyan" made no attempt to move. She shoved the crossbow in his back.

"Out, you lout!" she snapped. 

"My blade," the Lemilite snapped.

"You'll get it when you sober up and you'll be lucky it won't be in the back," she said. "Now go!" The handler watched the woman march the Lemilite outside, shouting threats the whole twenty feet to the doors.

"I'll be waiting for you, collector!" the Lemilite yelled. "You're not going anywhere until we have our talk!"

The handler swiveled back to the bar to find his cup empty.

"That'll be ten bits," the barkeep said over the murmurs of the bar. 

"Make it a half piece," a woman shouted. The handler turned back to the door to find the woman had returned minus one Lemilite. "Security tax."

"A half piece for security tax?" the handler echoed. "For double that I could get a phalanx of soldiers in brass armor."

"Well, until my inn houses such guests, I guess I'll have to do," the woman said. "And my services are a half piece." The handler had a whole piece in four quarter pieces. He even could have paid a half piece in bits if he wanted to. But a half piece was extortion. And if the woman he suspected was the innkeeper took a half piece now, she might charge him more for the information for the map. The handler begrudgingly slapped a quarter piece on the table. He tapped a grimy finger on the bronze coin and then slid it toward the beard man. The barkeep began to protest but the handler put a hand up. 

"This is as good as I'm giving." He swiveled around to the woman.

"Innkeeper, if you're charging anything over the ten bits I owed, I think I deserve a moment of your time. Innkeeper?" the handler hailed from across the room, as she headed for the exit. "I'm in need of cartography interpretation." The innkeeper didn't turn around, instead, she left the bar area through the set of double doors at the far end of the room. The handler sighed, grabbing his box. 

"Half piece," he mumbled irritatedly, tucking his folded map inside his pocket. He turned the barkeep. "If you charge a man anywhere near that for a service that still leaves him fully clothed, then you've charged too much, hear?"

The barkeep's lips tightened. He stared at the handler as he grunted off of his barstool.

"Half piece," he grumbled again, heading for the door.


	4. Chapter 4

The innkeeper sat at a desk just behind the inn's main door. Columns of books and loose paper towered behind her, cobwebs arching between them. The handler eyed the systems of cobwebs with equal parts intrigue and disgust.  
The innkeeper, a stout woman about half the size of the handler sat at eye level with the help of a tall stool behind the counter. The skin under her neck hung like a rooster's wattle, not quite as red. The handler smiled and greeted her. He did so despite her two attempts at extortion-- once for an oil lamp when he asked for a room, and the second time for escorting the Lemilite out of the premises. The handler was glad he left him in the room behind a locked door. He didn't want Kerr seeing him negotiate because it might make him think that perhaps Kerr could negotiate with him, too. 

"Night of Calm," the handler said, leaning against the counter. "Barkeep said you can read my map."

"I can help, you, aye," the woman said, answering another although not entirely irrelevant question. She pursed her already thin lips. "Thirty bits."

It was less than the handler expected. He remained stoic, taking a map out of his jacket pocket and unfolding it. The woman's dull eyes lit up and then returned to normal.

"Where did you get this?"

"Arodiste," a voice next to the handler said. As fast as a bolt mid-flight, a dagger dropped from the handler's sleeve and went straight to the throat of the person who had crept up to his side. The handler reeled and lowered the blade when he saw the person's face.

"What are you doing out of the room?" he snapped. The woman across the table seemed just as surprised to find him there, too. The top of Kerr's shirt was unbuttoned, exposing the thick metal collar around his neck to the innkeeper.

"It was dark," Kerr said, more as a explanation than a complaint. The handler grew nervous. He wasn't sure how he'd gotten out of a locked room, but he was sure he'd broken the lock, damage the innkeeper would probably demand more money for. He plunged a hand in his coin purse and asked if any candles had been returned. When the innkeeper said "no", he slapped a quarter piece on the table. The coin had disappeared behind the innkeeper's liver-spotted fingers with almost the same speed as he'd drawn his dagger. The innkeeper reached underneath the counter and produced an oil lamp. She brought it down on the table hard and then stared at the handler. Kerr stared at the counter, and the handler stared at the lamp's cold wick.  
"Well?" the handler demanded.  
"Fire's ten bits extra," the innkeeper said.  
"Oh, for Jinna's sake--" the handler snapped. He pulled off one of the piece of wood that had splintered off the counter, held it over the innkeeper's flame, and then lit the lamp. He handed it to Kerr and told him to return to the room.

"Is is true what Riyan said about you?" the innkeeper said. "Stealing lands and all of that?"

"The man holds his drink like a net," the handler said. "Men like that can't be trusted."

"Still, I'd be wary, stranger. These lands are no place for a traveller and his son. The dust devils suffocate men. The wild thistles are poisonous to the touch and our adders' venom works so quick you'd be dead before you called for help. If the people find out a tax collector travels through these lands, why," she rubbed her knarly fingers over her chin. "I imagine such a man would be skewered alive --"

"I'm no emperor's man," the handler maintained with an objectionable hand up. "Just a traveling one passing through. Now, can you read this map or not?"

He looked around and saw Kerr at the door's threshold, watching the interaction. Maintaining his icy gaze, the handler put his hand on the box as a threat. The boy ran out of the room. 

"I've never seen a map like it," the woman said. She looked down at the leathery paper, her knobby fingers tracing through the valleys on the bottom third of the map. "I've seen Riverdale maps and Arodiste maps, but this one--" she paused, staring down at her index finger which had just traced over a dried, dark splotch.

"Brandy," the handler said quickly. "You'd be surprised how strikingly similar it looks to old blood on the right material."  
"--In the right light," the innkeeper added sarcastically. "Yes-- I'm sure."

It was time to head upstairs. The Lemilite had caused a commotion over his coat. The innkeeper suspected him of being a tax collector, and worse yet, he'd spoken far too much. The words of an educated man would draw unwanted attention. The vernacular of the academy had been fine back home, but that was a horse's life from the inn where he currently stood. He suddenly became aware of how painfully long he had been standing at the counter. 

"The map you carry is an old one," the innkeeper said said. "Mayhaps it's why you can't get your bearings." She began decrypting the map, speaking seemingly as much to herself as to the man who'd paid her to interpret it. 

"That there's the wheat mill," she said, pointing to a strange set of red triangles. "Demolished thirty years ago." Her hand swung to the other side of the map. "That's Pagrin's Field. But his silos have been empty for a spell now," she said. "Reckon the whole place looks like much of Harith."

"Where are we?" 

She pointed at a set of crosses towards the bottom of the map.

"What is your destination?" she asked. 

"True north," he said. He did not say Maqsud or even a more general, 'the land of the Farlith'. 

The woman nodded. She explained the path, her index finger tapping twice on all the major landmarks he needed to look out for, and three times on the landmarks that no longer existed.

"Stay off the roads at night and never, I say, never sleep outside," the old woman said, with a cautionary finger up. "The winds just after summer drive the adders crazy. The coyotes'll steal any food you leave unattended. The robbers are vicious and then there's the galrab."

"Galrab?" the handler said. 

"Big shapeshifting beasts that prey on farmers," the old woman said. Eyes that were dull and exhausted had become alive, dancing with spirit and horror. The sags of skin under her eyes "We haven't seen any in a spell but people have been going missing all over Harith. Why, just last year my sister's daughter went out to visit my brother and never returned. My brother never received her, either. The same thing happened to woman in the town center."

If she was traveling on an unfamiliar rode, the most likely culprit was a squad of bandits, especially for a young woman. But the handler was ready to bring the conversation to an end. What she had called Galrab, he suspected were actually traduzkan and he had no desire to explore the topic with an innkeeper. 

"Surely you don't believe in such fairy tales," the handler said, stroking the bit of stubble the last two days had given him.

"Everything's a fairy tale until it strikes your village," the woman said ardently. Her voice grew louder. "Snatches your children. Terrorizes your livestock!"

The handler nodded appreciatively, folding the map. Inside he was ready to laugh. He'd almost fought a Lemilite and had been exhorted by the barkeep and the innkeeper. As far as he was concerned, the biggest threats were in the inn. He gathered his things and left, with the innkeeper calling after him.

"Sound advice is still sound advice, heeded or not!"

**Author's Note:**

> Enjoyed? Leave a comment about where you think it's heading or what you thought


End file.
